This article employs Ivan Sutherland’s 1965 concept of the Ultimate Display to discuss the experience generated by augmented reality art and cultural heritage. Analyzing projects that reimagine or reconstruct reality, the author discusses the social impact and cultural workings of these apps. The article shows how such apps can facilitate kinesthetic performances that intervene in established cultural narratives and open a window to new social realities. In this context, the author also introduces her project CHAR , an online collection of AR art and cultural heritage apps, which illustrates how Sutherland’s vision has been materialized through the mapping of AR-reconstructed realities.

This article analyzes mobile AR installations in order to demonstrate different strategies for producing a relational sense of place and time. These installations combine multiple narratives in situ; thus, they reshape existing perceptions and influence national identities. By means of exposing actual environments as constructed and therefore as virtual landscapes, mobile AR art exposes our situatedness and becomes a strong tool for activism as it encourages us to think beyond familiar, material reality. As such, it rejects an absolute perception of reality and reconfigures it as a relational domain.